Tag Archives: Vladimir Nabokov

Russia Has Always Hated Ukrainian Lit

By Robin Bates | Published: May 11, 2022

Russia has long sought to impose its language on its neighbors, sometimes even outlawing their indigenous lit.

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged cultural genocide, Frantz Fanon, liberation movements, Taras Shevchenko, Wretched of the Earth | Comments closed

Tennis Fiction and Osaka’s Brilliance

By Robin Bates | Published: September 14, 2020

Literary fiction that mentions tennis can raise our appreciation of the game, including the play of figures like Naomi Osaka. Nabokov, Roth, and Wallace have all written about tennis.

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged David Foster Wallace, Goodbye Columbus, Infinite Jest, Lolita, Naomi Osaka, Philip Roth, tennis | Comments closed

Is Sexist Lit Gaslighting Women?

By Robin Bates | Published: February 19, 2018

A Guardian article argues that critical praise for sexist male authors valorizes patriarchal attitudes.

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged Charlotte Bronte, Donald Trump, Ernest Hemingway, Feminism, Hillary Clinton, Human Stain, Jane Eyre, Lolita, MeToo, Norman Mailer, Philip Roth, Saul Bellow, Sexism | Comments closed

Roy Moore’s Obsession with Lolitas

By Robin Bates | Published: November 13, 2017

To understand Judge Roy Moore’s predilection for teenage girls, read “Lolita.” Like Humbert Humbert, Moore is obsessed with purity.

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged Fundamentalism, Lolita, pedophilia, Roy Moore, white Christian evangelicals | Comments closed

Trapped in an Emergency Room

By Robin Bates | Published: June 28, 2017

When a friend found herself suddenly trapped in a large metropolitan emergency room, Nabokov’s short story “Cloud, Castle, Lake” came to mind. It’s about a man who wants to leave travel tour and is prevented.

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged cancer, Cloud Castle Lake, hospitals | Comments closed

Reading Lit To Find the Meaning of Life

By Robin Bates | Published: January 8, 2017

Paul Kalinithi moves between neuroscience and literature as he tries to understand the meaning of life and death, including his own terminal disease.

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged Joseph Conrad, meaning of life, Paul Kalinithi, T. S. Eliot, Waste Land, When Breath Becomes Air | Comments closed

Invisible Man & Lolita Changed the ’50s

By Robin Bates | Published: December 13, 2016

Ellison’s “Invisible Man” and Nabokov’s “Lolita” both challenged basic 1950s assumptions. The former changed public perceptions on what it meant to be black while the latter violated a tacit agreement not to go digging under neatly manicured lawns bordered by white picket fences.

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged 1950s, aestheticism, formalism, Hans Robert Jauss, horizon of expectations, Invisible Man, Lolita, modernism, Ralph Ellison, reception theory, Richard Wright, social protest novel | Comments closed

How Is Lit Useful? Let Me Count the Ways

By Robin Bates | Published: January 30, 2014

A recent issue of “New Literary History” explores a number of ways that literature is useful.

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged Charles Dickens, Hard Times, Literary Theory, Lolita, reader response, utilitarianism | Comments closed

Arguing against Lit for Lit’s Sake

By Robin Bates | Published: January 28, 2014

Nabokov’s aestheticism in the 1960s tried to separate literature from history.

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged aestheticism, formalism, New Criticism, New Historicism | Comments closed